Nobody said getting to the NCAA Tournament would be easy.<\/p>\n
UCF<\/a> is finding that out the hard way as the Knights dropped a heartbreaker to Oklahoma State<\/a> in overtime, 111-104, on Tuesday night. It was the second consecutive loss for the Knights, who still remain in the hunt for an elusive berth in the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n On Saturday, UCF rallied from 15 points before eventually losing to Baylor on a controversial foul in the final seconds,\u00a087-86<\/a>.<\/p>\n Themus Fulks<\/a> scored a team-high 20 points as UCF (20-9, 9-8 Big 12) fell to 13-5 at Addition Financial Arena this season.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s two tough losses, but if we just buy into more on practice, it would really help us \u2026 benefit us,\u201d said guard Riley Kugel.<\/p>\n It was especially disappointing considering it was Senior Night, as Jamichael Stillwell, Poopha Warakulnukroh, Devan Cambridge, George Beale Jr., Kugel and Fulks were honored before the game.<\/p>\n Oklahoma State (18-12, 6-11 Big 12) won for the second time in the past three games.<\/p>\n Senior guard Anthony Roy led the Cowboys with 26 points, including 3 for 7 from 3-point range.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re a good offensive team and they have a lot of firepower,\u201d said coach Johnny Dawkins. \u201cWe did a good job of building the lead and we got out of character. I thought we took a couple ill-advised shots.\u201d<\/p>\n It was also UCF\u2019s annual Space Game celebration with the Knights\u2019 players proudly wearing their Canaveral Blue uniforms. Unfortunately, it wasn\u2019t enough to carry the team to a win.<\/p>\n UCF blasted off from the first tip, connecting on six of its first eight field goals, sprinting out to a 13-7 advantage over Oklahoma State. The Knights were hitting on all cylinders, fueled by seven early points by center John Bol.<\/p>\n Everyone was getting into the scoring act for UCF.<\/p>\n Redshirt junior center Elijah Hulsewe, playing in place of an injured Jeremy Foumena, scored six points in a row while grabbing a pair of early rebounds as the Knights built a double-digit lead with 13:54 left in the first half. Hulsewe finished with 9 points and 4 rebounds in 9 minutes.<\/p>\n Oklahoma State, meanwhile, went nearly three minutes without a point before scoring 16 of the next 21 points, cutting the lead to 28-26 with 7:57 in the first half. The Cowboys tied the game at 31 on a 3-pointer by Jaylen Curry at the 5:39 mark before a layup and a 3-pointer by Kugel, which helped the Knights retake the lead.<\/p>\n But a 35-17 run by Oklahoma State over the final 12 minutes helped the Cowboys take a 45-40 lead into halftime.<\/p>\n It was a back-and-forth affair to start the second half, with both teams trading mini-runs as OSU continued to hold a slight advantage.<\/p>\n UCF took its first lead since the 3:24 mark in the first half when Kugel connected on a 3-pointer from the top of the key to make it 56-54.<\/p>\n Oklahoma State retook the lead after back-to-back shooting fouls were called on the Knights. The second foul drew the ire of Dawkins, who was assessed a technical foul after stepping on the court to argue with officials.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just making sure I\u2019m fighting for my guys,\u201d said Dawkins. \u201cI\u2019ve got to fight for my team and that\u2019s what I was doing out there. The passion may have just gotten a little too high, and I got teed up.\u201d<\/p>\n There were a combined 52 fouls called in the game, with both teams combining for 85 free-throw attempts.<\/p>\n UCF rallied from 5 points down with 58 seconds left to tie the game at 94 thanks to Chris Johnson\u2019s 3-pointer at the top of the key with 11 seconds remaining.<\/p>\n Oklahoma State had a chance to win the game, but Jaylen Curry\u2019s floater rolled off the basket and Anthony Roy\u2019s shot at the buzzer was partially blocked by Bol, sending the game into overtime.<\/p>\n The Knights tied the game again at 100 with\u00a02:31 left in overtime, but failed to get any closer as Oklahoma State would run away with the win.<\/p>\n UCF wraps up the regular season with a road contest at West Virginia on Friday (8 p.m., CBSSN). The Big 12 Tournament begins on March 10 at T-Mobile Center in Kansas City.<\/p>\n Please find me on X, Bluesky or Instagram @osmattmurschel. Email: mmurschel@orlandosentinel.com<\/a>. Sign up for the Sentinel\u2019s Knights Weekly<\/a> newsletter for a roundup of all our UCF coverage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nobody said getting to the NCAA Tournament would be easy. UCF is finding that out the hard way…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[111,28,114,1335,139,141,140,76046,110,3865],"class_list":{"0":"post-177488","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-college-sports","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-latest-headlines","11":"tag-orange-county","12":"tag-orlando","13":"tag-orlando-headlines","14":"tag-orlando-news","15":"tag-social-sports","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-ucf-knights"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}